Purpose

​This is not good. Or is it?

I’m satisfied with my life right now for the most part. At least I’m able to manage and tolerate it. I’m able to find things that bring me joy and hope throughout the day that allow me to feel good about myself and about life. 

But I think relative to other people or at least relative to perceptions of other people or at least relative to expectations of where I’d be at and what I’d be doing with my life at age 23 from my younger self, I’m in a pretty bad situation. 

Or is my only problem comparing myself to other people or worrying about perceptions of other people or my past expectations? If I’m able to state I’m satisfied and finding joy and hope throughout the day, is there any reason I should have any problem?

I used to be able to justify or explain everything using some outside source: namely Christianity, the Bible, Jesus’ teachings, or some sort of spiritual or philosophical teaching based on these things. At least I did so in an extroverted way. 

Inside my mind, no matter what I said or wrote, I think I was as clueless as I am now. The only reason I gave explanations was to make it seem like I knew what I was doing and that there is an answer because I thought that was the only way I could be in relationship, in community with people who also subscribe to these sources of belief (at least outwardly, I have no idea what goes on inside other people’s minds).

Is relationship and community worth being fake? Is that the same only way one can be in relationship and community? Or maybe people who are in relationships and communities aren’t being fake, they actually have a shared and deep understanding the complex beliefs that they talk about each at a personal level.

It is obvious to me that I’m just basing my ideas here of “relationship” and “community” on the ideal versions of these phenomena that have been propagated in the cultures of the societies that have been most influential to me and I’ve spent the most time in in my life so far: churches and other Christian institutions. 

But what other societies/institutions are conscious about and make “relationship” and “community” ends to work towards, and study, and idealize rather than means to other ends? Only a small number of people part of these places actually talk about and examine “relationships” and “community” because most people are too busy being in and enjoying the relationships and communities they’re part of. 

I wish that could be me sometimes, but if there truly is ideals to strive for why be satisfied with what is already? But maybe the idea of ideals is stupid: I am part of some relationships and communities right now, why can’t that be enough, why do I have to have any “problem”?

I guess the other thing that is a worry to me which as I mentioned would likely be a big and obvious problem if other people were looking in on my situation: I have no job, no income, and no clear direction or leads in the short-term or long-term of what kind of job I feel motivated to get. 

I have a bit of funds to work with for the next few weeks and I’m getting a sizeable refund that will add to it soon, I’m eating and living frugally in general: again if I’m finding joy and hope in life do I need to declare to myself I have a “problem” that needs fixing?

I didn’t plan what I was going to write in this blog post, I just woke up and started writing based on the thoughts that were in my head that I felt I wanted to express rather than leave swirling in my mind (I’m happy I’ve allowed myself to have this outlet now). 

I’ve realized at this point though this relates to words of my former therapist about me in a report he wrote a few days ago to give to the new therapist: “I began to implement an identity perspective therapeutically, helping Jonathan identify the different aspects of his life that he strongly attaches to his vision of a healthy identity - meaningful relationships and clear and dedicated career path.”

Can I change my vision of a healthy identity or is my vision of a healthy identity what gives me an identity and to be in a place of health with it is to accept it and not see problems with it?

Whatever the answer to this question is, writing all this was fun. It’s one of the things that I would say gives that me joy and hope. I know I don’t need to define any problems or identity for this to be true.

From The Wounded Healer (1979) by Henri J. Nouwen:

8-9 - “In the absence of clear boundaries between himself and his milieu, between fantasy and reality, between what to do and what to avoid, it seems that Peter has become a prisoner of the now, caught in the present without meaningful connections with his past or future. When he goes home he feels that he enters a world that has become alien to him…Peter is not working hard to reach a goal, he does not look forward to the fulfillment of a great desire, nor does he expect that something great or important is going to happen. He looks into empty space and is sure of only one thing: if there is anything worthwhile in life, it must be here and now…What we see in Peter is a painful expression of the situation of what I call ‘humanity in the modern age’”

11 – “Most of us see such an abundance of material commodities around us that scarcity no longer motivates our lives, but at the same time we are groping for direction and asking for meaning and purpose. In all this we suffer from the inevitable knowledge that our time is one in which it has become possible for us to destroy, not only life but also the possibility of re-birth, not only an individual but also the human race, not only periods of existence but also history itself. The future of humanity has not become an option….For those who were born in the modern age…the problem is not that the future holds a new danger, such as nuclear war, but that there might be no future at all.”

12-13 – “But Peter thinks of himself more as one of the ‘last ones in the experiment of living’ than as a pioneer working for a new future. Therefore, symbols used by his parents cannot possibly have the same unifying and integrating power for him that they have for people with a pre-modern mentality. This experience of Peter’s we call ‘historical dislocation.” It is a ‘break in the sense of connection, which men have long felt with the vital and nourishing symbol of their cultural tradition; symbols revolving around family, idea-systems, religion, and the life-cycle in general.’ Why should people marry and have children, study and build a career; why should they invent new techniques, build new institutions, and develop new ideas – when they doubt if there will be a tomorrow that can guarantee the value of human effort?...Our reactions are not anxiety and joy, which were so much a part of human existence, but apathy and boredom. Only when we feel ourselves responsible for the future can we have hope or despair; but when we think of ourselves as the passive victims of an extremely complex technological bureaucracy, our motivation falters and we start drifting from one moment to the next, making life a long row of randomly chained incidents and accidents.”

13 – “When we wonder why the language of traditional Christianity has lost its liberating power for those who live in the modern age, we have to realize that most Christian preaching is still based on the presupposition that we see ourselves as meaningfully integrated with a history in which God came to us in the past, is living under us in the present, and will come to liberate us in the future. But when our historical consciousness is broken, the whole Christian message seems like a lecture about the great pioneers to someone on an acid trip.”

I was skeptical for a while about the whole neo-Buddhist "mindfulness", "live-in-the-moment", "enjoy-the-present", "nothing-is-good-or-bad-everything-just-is" ideology and all the gurus and gimmicks in mainstream culture that have come along with it but I have found myself subscribing to this way of thinking and living off and on myself for the past year or so. 

I think there are mental and physical health benefits in doing practices related to these things but Nouwen many years ago pointed out the flaws in basing one's whole belief system on the idea that the only thing that is true is the now, the present, one's own conciousness.

Extreme illustration of what "historical dislocation" looks like being lived out from Wall-E (2008) (although our society is not too far off today with Amazon, big-box stores, fast-food, streaming services, pornography, hookup-culture, smartphones, social media, etc.):